Scot Hein at GWAC

Last night’s monthly meeting of the Grandview Woodland Area Council (GWAC) was filled by a presentation and QA session with the articulate and interesting Scot Hein. Scot was for ten years the head of City of Vancouver’s Urban Design Studio (UDS) until he resigned about 18 months ago. He is now an adjunct professor in urban planning at UBC.

Scot gave the thirty or so attendees an excellent run-through of the urban design principles that drove Vancouver planning in the years he was at UDS. He noted that these design principles were the first lens through which development proposals were viewed. Ed: This should still be the case but increasingly developer profit, a sterile technocratic managerialism, and sheer panic seem to have taken over.

Scot noted his support for a city-wide plan — it helps “discipline” the planning process, he believes — but was adamant that contextuality is key and…